Climate Dome - Change Tomorrow Today

What is climate change?

The earth is getting warmer: this is changing the world's climate.
What is causing it? Scientists agree it's largely due to us humans.

By burning fossil fuels to power factories and refineries, we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

You can have too much of a good thing.
Gases in the atmosphere (known as greenhouse gases) are a good thing. Acting like a blanket they keep our planet warm and control our climate and weather systems. Unfortunately we're now increasing the amount of these gases in the atmosphere and changing its composition.

The result?

• The planet gets warmer.
• The way the atmosphere interacts with the oceans, land and life on earth changes.

What do a few degrees matter? A lot.

• The average temperature on Earth used to be 14°C.
• Over the last century this has increased by 0.7°C.
• By 2100 it's predicted to rise by 2-6°C.

This will significantly affect the natural world, people, and many, many habitats.
This is not good news!

Even worse, the temperature could soon get to the point where, despite all our efforts to limit our impact, it will keep on rising. This is called the tipping point. Scientists are still working on calculating this, but most believe it is between 3-5°C above today's temperature. A figure we could reach in your grandchildren's or great grandchildren's lifetimes.

Variations in the earth's surface temperature from 1000 to 2100 - Warming scenarios estimated from scientific modelling.

Don't panic!

It is not too late to make a difference. How much the temperature rises and whether we reach the "tipping point" depends on what we all do to limit our impact on the atmosphere.

It's our choice

Projected global temperature rise